A form of protein, clusterin, has been associated with many different facets of cardiometabolic syndrome risk through its actions in the liver, suggests a new research study. In addition, it is linked to increased cardiovascular disease risk and mortality, high blood pressure, harmful cholesterol levels, and fatty liver disease. Cardiometabolic syndrome (CMS) is a cluster of conditions that increase a person’s risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. These conditions include high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels.
Their goal was to discover new factors produced by the cells in fat tissue that have an impact on cardiometabolic disease. In particular, they wanted to identify those important to maintaining the framework of fat tissue, called the extracellular matrix, which becomes dysfunctional in obesity, For the study, the team from The Ohio State University in the US. included a small group of 54 obese and 18 lean patients. The findings, published in the journal, Diabetes Care, showed that clusterin, which is overproduced from the fat cells of obese patients, is strongly related to insulin resistance, said the study.
Insulin resistance is a major cause of Type-2 Diabetes, and patients with obesity commonly have both metabolic and cardiovascular complications.CMS, which affects about 25 percent of the world’s population, is now recognized as a disease entity by the World Health Organization and the American Society of Endocrinology. Further translational research involving mouse models is needed to learn more about how clusterin impacts each of the CMS components and whether administrating clusterin-inhibiting antibodies inhibits CMS
